Abacus Life Gets Onto Nasdaq

News July 03, 2023 at 12:07 PM
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Abacus Life Settlements and an affiliate, Longevity Market Assets, are now using the Nasdaq Capital Market to promote the idea that your clients can get cash for their in-force life insurance policies.

The Orlando, Florida-based life settlement firm today moved onto Nasdaq by completing a previously announced $618 million merger with East Resources Acquisition Company, a Boca Raton, Florida-based special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.

The stock of the combined company, which will be called Abacus Life, is still trading on Nasdaq under East Resources' ERES stock symbol. On Wednesday, the company's common stock will begin trading under the symbol ABL.

A SPAC is a public company that exists to help other companies get stock exchange listings. East Resources was controlled by Terry Pegula, the owner of the Buffalo Bills football team. ERES shareholders voted to approve the deal last week.

What It Means

Abacus Life now has more capital that it can use to buy your clients' unwanted life insurance policies, and it has more money it can use to tell you, your clients and your competitors that investors are hungry for policies.

The Nasdaq listing itself could give Abacus Life a better chance to get CEO Jay Jackson and other executives, such as Bill McCauley, the chief financial officer, onto TV shows, radio shows and podcasts aimed at investors.

Abacus Life

Abacus Life Settlements was founded in 2004, and it started the Longevity Market Assets life settlement asset management affiliate in 2017.

Abacus Life Settlements lost $52,495 in 2022 on $22 million in revenue, and Longevity Market Assets earned $32 million that year on $45 million in revenue.

Together, the two companies have 83 employees. They have relationships with 78 other financial services companies and about 30,000 financial advisors. They service life insurance policies that are set to pay $950 million in death benefits.

The Life Settlement Market

Jackson, Abacus Life's CEO, has estimated that U.S. residents now let life insurance policies with $233 billion in policy value lapse every year, and that life settlement firms succeed at buying policies with only about $4 billion in policy value.

He has suggested that life insurance policy cash value could account for about 6% to 8% of the assets of a typical agent, advisor or financial planner's clients and that many financial professionals have not thought much about that slice of the portfolio pie.

For some clients, who turn out to have savings shortfalls, sales of unwanted in-force policies could help supplement the assets in rainy day funds, 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts.

Headwinds and Tailwinds

Abacus Life and East Resources said in SPAC deal filings that possible risks include some life insurers' hostility toward the life settlement market, and efforts by life insurers to use special "enhanced cash surrender value" campaigns to, in effect, buy back policies that they themselves have issued.

One tailwind may be death: Although the overall U.S. death rate has fallen sharply since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it still appears to be more than 5% higher than it was in 2019, before the pandemic started. If the death rate stays high and speeds up life insurance policy death benefit payouts, that could improve life settlement companies' performance.

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